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Sunday, April 22, 2012

Amanuensis Monday (Sort of) - Just a Little Neat Information

I was feeling a bit lazy this afternoon. I had just finished reading a great book (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo...very good but NOT for kids!) and didn't really have the motivation to get moving on a blog post. I decided to check my files for something military-flavored for a Military Monday post. In doing so I grabbed the obituary for my cousin Monsignor Aloysius McElwee. Msgr McElwee had been a Brigadier General in the Army and had led quite a full life (you can read more about him in his obituary here).

Even though I had already posted his obituary and didn't have any new information on him, I became curious as to whether or not I could easily find a picture of him online (preferably in his uniform). No such luck. I skulked back to Ancestry.com and was about to look at family trees to see if anyone had him in there with a picture that I could beg to use when I came across a passenger list with him in it.

Extract of the S.S. Manhattan Passenger List from Ancestry.com

Apparently he was a passenger on the S.S. Manhattan that left Genoa, Italy on June 2nd 1940 and was heading back to America with an arrival of June 10th. It also gave his address which I will have to look for his family there in the 1940 census now!

Why do I find this neat information? Well it said in his obituary that he "...took his preparation for the priesthood at the Collegio Brignole Sale Negroni, Genoa, Italy, and was ordained by the Most Rev. Francesco Canessa, D.D., in Genoa on May 18, 1940."

So Aloysius was on his way back to America, a newly ordained priest. To me that's fairly neat!